Weather Trend Feeds Region Diet Of Cold

Nagging Weather Is Like A Bad Cold

It Won't Go Away

A nagging weather pattern has delivered only a few cloudless days to the region so far this month and is expected to bring another dose of rain and cold this weekend.

Although only 2.2 inches of precipitation, including some snow, has fallen this month, it has occurred on 14 of the month's 23 days so far, said Mel Goldstein, director of the Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

And the brief reprieve Thursday -- sunshine and 70-degree temperatures -- is over.

Goldstein said an inch of rain is expected to fall between today and Sunday, with cooler temperatures making freezing rain or sleet possible Sunday.

"Generally, the whole spring has been at sea," Goldstein said.

The rainy and cold weather has come from a stationary low pressure system that formed over Canada in early March.

"Spring is a sometime thing in New England," Goldstein said, adding he does not expect the weather to clear until Tuesday.

The additional rain this weekend is expected to help raise the level of the Connecticut River to flood stage.

The river has been rising significantly over the past three days and was 3 feet below Hartford's 16-foot flood stage Thursday afternoon, said George McKillop, hydrologist with the River Forecast Center in Bloomfield.

He said the water could reach 14 to 14 1/2 feet by this morning and 15 to 15 1/2 feet by Saturday morning.

"This is it. This is the thick of it," McKillop said. He said that flood warnings have been posted for rivers and streams in the snow-belt regions of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

"The continued warm air here is going to further melt that snow pack. At this point, we don't know how much snow is left up there," McKillop said.

"Minor nuisance type and low-land type flooding" is possible in the Hartford area, he said. McKillop said other rivers in Connecticut also are rising from the rain over the last week, but

will not be significantly affected by the melting snow packs to the north.

"It's very deceiving because when you're down here in Connecticut you see what appears to be summerlike weather upon us. The thought of any snow is nonexistent. In Maine, they still have ice in the rivers," McKillop said.

Although there is no snow on the ground here, the region has had six consecutive weeks in which temperatures have averaged 4 degrees below normal. Goldstein said that a period so consistently below average in temperature hasn't occurred here since since November and December 1989.

The sunshine Thursday brought a 71-degree temperature to Hartford, but that will be only a memory by weekend.

"The beautiful weather Thursday was only the calm before our next storm," Goldstein said.

He said rain should fall today through Sunday with high temperatures ranging from 65 degrees today to about 50 degrees on Sunday